Look into the future

What will be the big innovations of 2003? Better communication between your gadgets, more weapons against spam and a new generation of chips. Charles Arthur makes the predictions

So hello to version 2.003, as they might say if the calendar was a piece of software. Did anything much happen last year? Looking back, it's hard to perceive that anything changed radically; computer companies were locked in gloom because nobody was buying their products. Web-based companies kept wondering why people wouldn't pay for online content. But the price of broadband fell steeply, and so it has now become a more accessible way to access the net. Anyway, here are my suggestions for what you should expect in the coming 12 months.

* You'll be getting a DVD-writer. I don't know about you, but my personal files (including a couple of hundred CDs in MP3 format) don't fit on to one, or two, or even 10 back-up CDs now. I've got gigabytes of the stuff – thousands and thousands of megabytes. So while I want to take the usual care about backing up my data, against the day when some fool walks past my disks with a big magnet, it's more laborious than I'd like.

But a blank DVD disc costing about £5 can carry 4.7Gb of data – enough to make serious backups worthwhile. Prices of add-on DVD-writers that can write at 4x speed are falling. Beware, however, of getting caught in the latest format wars, which contain confusions such as DVD-R, DVD+R, and DVD-RAM.

* Seeing a lot more personal video recorders (PVRs). TiVo and Sky+ have had this market to themselves, and gained a fanatical following (at home we'd go mad without our Sky box, and think TiVo is even better). They let you choose, record, rewind and pause TV. Now companies such as Panasonic are moving in, aiming to make the technology cheaper, and searching for the ideal advertising tag. Is it "pause while it plays"? "Watch the start while you record the end"? Whatever, a lot of you are going to get a lightbulb going on when you realise how useful these things are.

* More Bluetooth. This technology is now being built into more and more mobile phones. Like wireless USB, Bluetooth links small and big devices. It isn't fast, but it is effective – and very effective if you use it to link your laptop to your phone wirelessly and dial in to the net via a high-speed GPRS mobile connection. At last, mobile working that's really mobile. Apple will probably start incorporating Bluetooth hardware in all its computers from now on.

* New laptops that run a bit cooler. After a Swiss scientist burnt himself in a most painful place last year by sitting his laptop on his lap for a couple of hours, it's become obvious that the Pentium chip runs much too hot for mobile use. Intel will "in the first quarter" (we think March) of 2003 release a chip codenamed "Banias" that will run cooler. It might also be slower, but will have many wireless functions built-in, making it more useful.

* Apple machines incorporating newer, faster IBM chips. When Steve Jobs returned in 1996 to the company he co-founded, he could boast that the Motorola processors it used ran much faster than Pentiums, in terms of horsepower if not megahertz. Since then Motorola, distracted by its telecoms woes, has fallen a long way behind in the semiconductor race. This has irked Apple and its high-end users. But later this year Apple will start using the IBM "Gigaprocessor Ultralite" processor, which should truly cut the top-end mustard. (I don't expect the announcement at Apple's Expo show this week.) Apple's market share will inch upwards, helped by its Unix-based operating system, which developers love.

* You'll want better spam protection. Spam is a growing problem on the net, which threatens to make e-mail pointless. Personally I'm quietly furious that ISPs don't take the simple solution open to them, which is to include clauses in their contracts saying that if you intentionally start spam through their network, they will sue you for multiple thousands of pounds. That would create a "virtuous circle" of ISPs subscribing to the same ethos. They could begin to squeeze out those who allow abuse. Otherwise I think someone, somewhere is going to do something nasty to a spammer – and it won't be pretty.

In the short term, you could do a lot worse than get yourself the spam-catcher Post Armor from www.postarmor.com. It's free for a single account, and runs on anything (requires the Java language, which Windows XP omits). Sadly, it can't deal with webmail.

* You'll also want a firewall. If you get broadband, then most ISPs will mention the positives (you can be on the phone and the net at the same time) but not the downer (your PC is asking to be hacked, unless you have a firewall). Windows XP and Mac OS X each have their own built in, though disabled; Windows users can get Zone Alarm (www.zonelabs.com/) for free. Mac users on pre-X systems need not bother.

* Exciting new web services that pull together the functionality of existing sites and knit them into newer things. One simple example is Googlism (www. googlism.com) which gives results according to what is said about someone or something at Google. But developers are working on similar products using Amazon and any other website brave enough to give the outside world a handle to turn.

* Reading "blogs" (weblogs) in the way you used to read newspapers online. Some are insightful, some trivial, some get the news first, others provide the opinions that put the news in context. If you don't know where to start reading, try the Blogging Ecosystem at www.myelin.co.nz/ ecosystem and also Technorati at www.technorati.com and start following links. Don't try this if you're in a hurry.

* Better communication between your home computer and the rest of your domestic gadgets. I don't mean internet fridges (saints preserve us from that dot.com madness) but being able to do useful things like getting your home cinema system to pipe the DVD you're playing on your computer, or play the programme you recorded on your PVR on your PC via a wireless link, without having to do lots of tedious setting-up. Apple has the lead in this, with an open technology it calls Rendezvous (more formally known as ZeroConf). It lets the machines on the network discover each other and tell each other what their capabilities are. Expect some significant announcements from companies such as Philips and Canon very soon – perhaps at Apple's Expo this week.

* Traditional computer companies to sell more non-computer things. Hewlett-Packard does scanners, printers and all sorts. Apple has the iPod MP3 player. Gateway (in the US) has started selling plasma TVs. If people won't buy computers, they won't sell them computers.

And very quickly, here's what not to expect, and why.

* Don't think everyone will get a 3G mobile phone. The networks aren't built, there'll be teething troubles, different networks won't talk to each other, and the services will be hideously expensive: if you'd pay to watch a tiny video of a football match then you're as stupid as the people who bid such huge sums for 3G in the first place.

* Don't expect many more websites to move to paid-for access. The dot.com bust has flushed through the system, and those sites that couldn't get by without ads or subscriptions have shut up shop. People don't buy much content online because (1) there's always another website with pretty much the same content, and perhaps even a salient comment about it; (2) getting the price right is so hard – is £20 too much or too little for an online magazine? (3) there's no workable system for tiny "one-off" payments, because it can't work for all the flavours of Windows, and Macs, and also be hacker-proof. The faint exception to this is sites offering film or music downloads to broadband users – but even then the picture usually occupies only a quarter of a screen, and makes one feel ripped off rather than privileged. There's a reason why pay-to-view webcasts of rock concerts have been such a bust: it's better either to be there or watch it on TV.

* Don't expect Apple to launch a machine based on an Intel (or compatible) chip. It would turn their business model inside-out at a time when it's been looking healthy. Such a strategy wouldn't gain them any more business, and would upset their developers, who would have to rewrite everything for the second time in two years. Not even Apple is that sadistic.

Network@independent.co.uk